Last product of the least productive, lowest rated Congress in modern times
Last edited Thu Jan 3, 2013, 01:32 PM - Edit history (1)
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tweeted by, Andrew Kaczynski @BuzzFeedAndrew
So the Violence Against Women Act won't be renewed. Last product of the least productive, lowest rated Congress in modern times.
from MHP at MSNBC:
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor voted against his own party’s leadership Tuesday night on the fiscal cliff Senate bill, and lost. According to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Cantor was working “as hard as he could” to get a vote on Hurricane Sandy relief–he lost that, too.
But Cantor won something else Tuesday night: he managed to effectively kill the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), and send advocates for its reauthorization back to the drawing board.
Among the many items up for consideration at the conclusion of the 112th Congress was the Senate bill reauthorizing VAWA, which was originally passed in 1994. The Senate version had newly added tribal protections for American Indian women, granting tribes limited authority to prosecute sexual-assault crimes on their lands–whether the crimes are committed by American Indians or not. Cantor stood in the way of the Senate bill, offering instead the version the House passed, which excluded the new American Indian protections, along with those for undocumented immigrants as well as lesbian and trans women.
Though his actions indicated that he was against giving every woman in America the same legal protections against violent perpetrators, Cantor never articulated in public exactly why he was doing this . . .
The chief Democratic advocate for the VAWA reauthorization, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, released a statement that was reported in Jezebel:
“The House Republican leadership’s failure to take up and pass the Senate’s bipartisan and inclusive VAWA bill is inexcusable. This is a bill that passed with 68 votes in the Senate and that extends the bill’s protections to 30 million more women. But this seems to be how House Republican leadership operates. No matter how broad the bipartisan support, no matter who gets hurt in the process, the politics of the right wing of their party always comes first.”
(VAWA was first drafted by the office of Senator Joe Biden (D-DE))
Maddow blog: http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/01/02/16305284-house-gop-blocks-violence-against-women-act?lite
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